Bridges to Wellness
The difficulty in getting, much less affording, quality health care is one of the major obstacles facing residents of low-income neighborhoods across the nation. All to often, working class families are forced to leave their neighborhoods and spend an hour or more just to get to a clinic or hospital, not to mention the long wait for service once they arrive. In South and East Los Angeles, this gap results in some 1 million unmet patient visits each year.
Responding to this crisis, LISC Los Angeles launched the Health Sector Initiative in the mid 1990's. This innovative program was designed to increase the accessibility and affordability of healthcare services in hard-pressed L.A. neighborhoods, as well as link residents of these neighborhoods with jobs in the health care sector. Important strides towards creating and implementing a variety of health care programming and facility development in low-income neighborhoods occurred.
This included:
- Opening of a health care clinic and a vision clinic that together have provided health services and education to close to 50,000 patients;
- Significant progress towards the opening of another full-service health care clinic and wellness center expected to serve upwards of 20,000 patients annually;
- Training of almost 135 local residents as health care promoters, many of whom have moved onto successful employment in the health care sector; and
- Progress towards creating a business incubator for health sector-related businesses.
In 2000, with the support of a generous grant from the California Endowment, LA LISC expanded the program to another four CDCs and renamed it Bridges to Wellness. With this expansion, LA LISC's effort to bridge the gap between low-income neighborhoods and accessible and affordable health care now extends from South Los Angeles and Watts to MacArthur/Westlake, Chinatown, Koreatown, and Hollywood. Recent projects include Chinatown Service Center's dental clinic in Chinatown and Pueblo Nuevo's family health services clinic In Westlake/MacAurthur Park.
For more information please contact Louise Manuel.